Arthur Aston

Arthur Aston (1590-1649) was an English Cavalier who was best known for his defense of Drogheda, Ireland against Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War.

Biography
Arthur Aston was born in Fulham, Middlesex, England to a Catholic family of nobles, and the young Aston and his father both served as mercenaries for Poland-Lithuania during its wars with Sweden in the 1620s. In 1627, Aston was captured by Swedish troops near Danzig, and he defected to Sweden in 1629, raising an English regiment of the Swedish Army in 1631. In 1640, he returned to England, and he served as Colonel General of the Dragoons during the English Civil War as a cavalier. In 1648, he joined James Butler, 1st Duke of Ormonde in Ireland, where the Irish confederates had formed an alliance with the royalists. In 1649, Oliver Cromwell and his Parliamentarian army stormed Drogheda and captured Aston, who was beaten to death with his own wooden leg during the massacre of the city's inhabitants.